A flexible software for tracking of markers used in human motion analysis

In this work, we present a software for the tracking of markers used in human motion analysis. This software is based mainly on image sequences captured by video cameras and on image processing and computer vision tools. Unlike the optoelectronic systems, which record only the coordinates of the markers, a video-based system offers more visual information and flexibility which can be exploited in different applications. However, it needs a more complex tracking procedure concerned with the extraction and identification of the used markers. The tracking module presented here is divided into the following three procedures: segmentation, matching and prediction. The segmentation consists in extracting the objects of interest (markers). The matching is used to find the correspondence between the extracted objects in two consecutive frames. The prediction is important to limit the region of processing, thus reducing the execution time. Some results of the automatic tracking are presented together with their application in human motions analysis.